Polish impact on Coast seafood industry a little-known secret

Among those was the Kopszywa family, which still maintains a presence here - not only on the Coast but in the seafood industry itself. For example, Mike Kopszywa is a fourth-generation fisherman who will serve as the 2019 Shrimp King at this weekend's Blessing of the Fleet festivities. His family was part of the influx of workers that helped boost Biloxi's population from 1,500 in the early 1880s to about 8,000 at the turn of the century. Much of that was due to the massive growth of the seafood industry, which went from only one oyster-packing plant in 1880 to 15 different canneries by the1920s.

Victoria Kopszywa Caprari is a relative of Mr. Kopszywa, and she said her family was led by. her grandfather and patriarch, Edward Kopszywa. He and his wife, Mary Agnes Misiora Kopszywa, had eight children. Their names were Frank, Joseph, Walter, Henry, Edward "Cotton" Kopszywa, Jr., Stanley "Rookie" Kopszywa, and daughters Anna Kopszywa Smolcich and Leona Kopszywa Gazzo. Edward Sr.'s brother, Walter, also made the trip south to settle.

“When they came down, my grandfather (Edward) was in Pass Christian, and that's where they worked," Mrs. Caprari said, adding that Stanley "Rookie" Kopszywa - the youngest of the six boys - was her father. "They lived in The Point, which was a city of its own... and we grew up with the best of times on The Point in the shrimp industry. 

“My grandfather ran the 'Miss Poland' and each one of my grandfather's sons had a shrimp boat and they all worked in the shrimp Industry.” 

Mrs. Caprari went on to say that Edward, Sr. bought a house on Oak Street in 1929 that stands to this day and many of the family relatives stayed there because it was a larger home with two stories. The whole family spoke Polish back in the early days, she said. 

"They had camps that they let the fishermen and their families live in, and that's where they settled,* said Mary Lea Gazzo Lachner, also a descendent of the family whose mother was Leona Kopszywa Gazzo. "They were originally from Krakow, Poland." 

But men weren't the only members of the family who worked in the seafood industry, noting that many women worked in the canneries and processing plants while their fisherman husbands were out on the water earning their livelihood.

"Our grandmother would get up - and she had eight children - early in the morning at the factory and come back to make sure her kids went to school," Mrs. Lachner said. "Then, she would go back to work in the factory.

         "Every afternoon at 3 o'clock, most of the Polish ladies would come to (Stanley's) house, which is the two-story yellow house on Oak Street - next to the Vietnamese Church - but we don't have many pictures because if they weren't lost in Hurricane Camille they were lost in Katrina," Mrs. Lachner said.

"My Mama had everything, but we lost them in Camille," Mrs. Caprari added. 

During these prosperous times, "everybody thought they were rich,” Mrs. Lachner said, and the family stuck together along with other Poles. Families congregated together on off days - which were few - and relatives from Baltimore were a routine presence at the family home on Oak Street.

"We all lived within a block of each other - all the Kopszywas - on 4th Street, Hoxie Street, Oak Street,1st Street, and everywhere," Mrs. Caprari said."That's the way they did it...I just remember as a little girl all my older cousins would all get together and my grandfather (Edward) played the accordion, we all did the polka and we ended up by where the Golden Nugget is now."

"It was so nice at Christmas-time, because all the children were there and we would go to each other's house and have a big, ole feast," Mrs. Lachner said.

So what might have started as a small family with a name that was routinely mispronounced as "Kop-Silva," according to Mrs. Caprari, still maintains a historical and modern foothold in the seafood industry and the city of Biloxi. A man who was once called "Mr. Edwards, due to a native inability to pronounce his last name will have a great-grandchild prominently recognized as "King" of this year's Blessing of the Fleet and he owns and operates "The Renegade."

"We keep up with our heritage by acknowledging our family," Mrs. Caprari said. "I'm French, Polish and Indian (Native American) and I go to every Blessing and everything ….. and they always acknowledge the French people, the Yugoslavians, Croatians, but you never hear them say, "The Polish' and it would be nice to hear."

Traditions live on, so long as they are maintained.

Editor's Note: Some of the source material for this story was gleaned from "Biloxi's Seafood Industry - A History of Immigrants," by Deanne Stephens Nuwer, Ph.D.